


Atlas

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome May Parker (Spider-Man), BAMF Gwen Stacy, Bad Eating Habits, Bad Sleeping Habits, Bank Robbery, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Canon Character of Color, Complicated Relationships, Crime Fighting, Crimes & Criminals, Extended Metaphors, Family, Family Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Ganke is a Good Bean, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Guilt, Homework, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, If you're an easy crier I guess, Introspection, It's 24 pages, Jefferson Davis is Doing His Best, May Parker (Spider-Man) Needs a Hug, Mentioned Gwen Stacy, Mentions of Character Death, Metaphors, Miles Morales Is A Sweetheart, Miles Morales Needs a Hug, Miles Morales is Doing His Best, Miles Morales is a Sunshine Boy, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Moving On, New York City, Not much time for that when you're a vigilante, Oops, Organized Crime, Parallels, Peter B. Parker Needs a Hug, Peter B. Parker is a good teacher, Racism, Recovery, Rio Morales is a Good Mom, Robbery, Set post movie, Sleep Deprivation, Sorry about that!, Spider-Man Interacting with New Yorkers, Spider-Verse, Stream of Consciousness, Supportive May Parker (Spider-Man), Survivor Guilt, Sweet Miles Morales, That's not super related but it's TRUE, The Other Universe Spiderlings Aren't Major Characters, This... is so long, Tissue Warning, Trigger Warnings, Uncle Aaron Is Complicated, Vandalism, Why is this who I am, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, Worldbuilding, and i love him, and over 11000 words, child heroes, complicated relationships are complicated, graves, graveyards, jefferson davis is a good dad, miles morales protection squad, oh my gods, people are complicated, spray paint, whoot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 12:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17808188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: "All it is is a leap of faith," Peter B. Parker says, eyes earnest and wide, and Miles wishes it were that simple.But it’s not, it’s not, because when Miles leaps the glass catches to his hands and shatters, comets flaring into life in the mirrored light of New York below before being abruptly cut out, and he falls and he falls and he falls, down, down, down.Except- he’s not- he’s rising, he’ssoaring,and the city has never looked so beautiful and his heart never so full.Is this how it feels,he thinks,to be alive?And for a few perfect moments that last forever Miles believesYes, it is,with every molecule of his being.(Or: Life is complicated, and grief is complicated, and being a child hero is complicated, but the point is that we try.)





	Atlas

**Author's Note:**

> This is so, so long. Oh my gods.
> 
> Please read the warnings. Please forgive me if it comes off too rambly or repetitive.
> 
> Happy late Valentines!

Miles Morales wakes up, and his breath chokes tight and small before it ever leaves his throat.

He dreams about Peter Parker, about those _eyes,_ staring at him bright and hopeful and then reassuring and desperate and determined and scared, and always _blue_ , blue, blue, so blue one could _drown-_

Miles used to wonder why Spiderman always wore that mask, and now he knows, because it would be near impossible to forget those eyes, those bright blue eyes that are somehow so _alive,_ alive in a way that Miles might have forgotten how to embrace beyond the rush of spray paint hitting dull cement, the rush of bringing something into full colour, like spring, or rebirth.

He dreams about Peter Parker, about those bright blue eyes, about that _life_ in them.

He dreams about Peter Parker, about the sickening sound of that _crunch,_ about the way that life had been snuffed out all too soon, like a candle being blown dark.

(Sometimes, in Miles’ dreams, Peter Parker’s face morphs and becomes older as his hair becomes brown, and those bright blue eyes grow tired and dark, and his voice becomes hoarse and beaten upon, and it tells him to _Run, run,_ and Miles always does.)

( _We don’t run,_ his mother tells him, _We always get back up,_ Gwen tells him, and Peter B. and all the rest, and it echoes in his soul and makes him feel so _small,_ because he’s built to run, built to _hide,_ and he wakes up sometimes and he feels so invisible that it makes him want to _scream_.)

 

Miles Morales wakes up, and his breath chokes up before it ever leaves his throat.

Standing on shaking feet, he stumbles his way to the bathroom, looks at the mirror, and there is no one looking back. So he breathes, breathes, and cool glass fogs up with warm breath, living breath, and he wonders if this is how it feels to be a ghost, like coloured ink on blank pages and sprayed paint on cold cement that has no name to help find their creators.

Abandoned, left high and dry, and drowning in the air that one is meant to breathe.

 

_Fast forward. Rewind. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Miles._

 

His face is everywhere. It’s on billboards and posters and signs. It’s in the mournful, haunting music and online. _Spiderman,_ everyone whispers, _Peter Parker._ Everyone comes forward, everyone has a story to say. This was a hero, blond hair and blue eyes filled with life, and now he is dead and gone.

Everyone whispers, _Ten years._

Everyone whispers, _Twenty six years old, so young, so, so brave._

_He was brave,_ Miles wants to say, _you should have seen him,_ but he doesn’t know how to form the words.

There are memorials, statues, a woman goes to the paper with a story about how Spiderman saved her young son from an oncoming truck, about how her kid will be graduating high school soon, top of his class. A couple of girls post online about how Spiderman rescued them from an attempted mugging, or worse, and how they are so, so thankful. An old man talks about how Spiderman helped him get his groceries- bread and soup and milk and cheese- home every week without fail for four years running.

Everyone has a story to say, when someone is willing to listen.

Miles is willing, but he’s also scared, because these stories are Spiderman. Because Spiderman is the big man in blue and red, the hero, the one who swooped in to save the day. Spiderman is _him,_ that man with gold hair and blue eyes, staring down at him from everywhere and anywhere, staring down at him from all these stories being told from everyone.

_This is what I did,_ those blue eyes whisper, _What will you do?_

And Miles does not know. He feels like he is five years old, trying to walk around in his father’s boots that are ten sizes too big. Spiderman is not this thirteen year old kid with his DIY costume and headphones and beginner mistakes.

Spiderman is supposed to be bigger than life- _except Peter Parker never felt bigger than life, Peter Parker felt astoundingly real from start to finish, was astoundingly real, because Miles remembers the blood, the scrapes and the bruises and those bright blue eyes, remembers too big fists pounding down, down, down and the sickening_ crack _echoing through his ears-_ and Miles is… not.

But he tries. _God,_ he tries. Maybe that’s enough.

It has to be enough.

_Please_ be enough.

 

Sometimes, when Miles Morales feels a bit too small and the shoes a bit too big, he heads to the cemetery.

Sometimes, he talks, confesses worries and pains and fears, gushes about the awesomeness of it all, about that feeling of the air rushing past so fast and _alive,_ rambles about the latest villain and how they were defeated, whispers, almost so quietly he can’t hear it, _I wish you were here to see it, I wish I wasn’t alone._

(The Spiders from the other universes flash through his mind every time, but they’re not dead, they’re out they’re living, and it gives him some small inkling of companionship.)

Sometimes, he just sits by the silent gravestone and thinks, lets the thoughts trickle down like his mother’s fingers on the ivory keys of the piano. He brings flowers, or a recent piece of art, or a tupperware of the latest leftovers he found in the fridge.

This time, he shows up, and someone is already there.

May Parker usually cuts an imposing figure, despite her thin frame. She has this- _strength_ about her, in the way she stands, the way her eyes glimmer in the dark.

There is none of this strength now. She looks small, maybe even smaller than her size would suggest. Her whole frame is collapsed into herself, and the wind blows cold and lonely, like there’s some mournful song playing in the night air that no one can hear.

Inexplicitly, he thinks of Spider Noir.

Miles steps towards her, and then goes farther until he is besides her. And they stand together, old and young and light and dark, a world of experience between them, keeping them together and holding them apart.

“He was such a good boy,” May says, something frail and terrible in her grave tone.

_And now he’s gone_ gets left unsaid.

She’s lost her parents and her husband and her relatives and now her kid in all but blood, Miles thinks as he nods, throat stuck for some reason, and wonders if you can become numb to this sort of pain, this all consuming pain that grips your very _soul_ and drags you _down, down down._

He looks at May’s tired eyes, the way they glisten in the lamp light, and doesn’t think so.

(His uncle has a grave, just a few blocks down the road. Miles knows, has walked towards it almost every day, but he can never bring himself to walk past the gate, knows seeing the tombstone would somehow make it all real in a way he’s not quite willing to register yet.)

They stand there together, and the gifts left behind by hundreds and hundreds of admirers and mourners dance in the quiet wind, and the streetlamps gleam low.

Then May speaks, voice still lost, still tired, still broken just beyond out of shape.

“Enough of that, then. Would you like to come in for some tea, Miles?”

Miles shoves his hands deeper into his jacket pockets. It’s late, he’s tired, but he doesn’t want to be alone.

“Sure. That sounds great, Ms. Parker. I mean- uh- Mrs. Parker. I mean, err, Ma’am-”

She smiles small, crow lines by her eyes and happy lines by her lips, and Miles is struck breathless by how blue those orbs are, just like Peter’s, just like _Spiderman’s._

The life in them burns low, but it’s still there, it’s not diminished, not yet.

“Call me May,” she says, and Miles breathes cold night air and the fragrance of a hundred snuffed out candles, reflecting on how this might be the only spot in New York City that doesn’t stink of pollution and garbage.

It’s fitting, somehow.

“Okay,” he says, just that, and they walk out of the cold lonely cemetery together and to a house with a tarp covering a hole in the wall and piles of debris swept up into corners, broken furniture lying around half fixed.

“It’s a bit of a mess right now,” says May, something heavy in her tone, and Miles gets the sense she’s not just talking about the living room, “but we’ll get through it soon enough.”

And they sit and they drink tea and eat stale biscuits, and she whispers tales about Peter Parker, a good boy with a bright future, who loved chemistry and snapped pictures with a dorky camera and laughed like the sun was shining just for him whenever his troubled skies were clear enough for him to see it.

Miles has his own tales to tell one day, about a tall steady man who did wrong but was _there_ for him, there for him with every step and every breath, who supported him and his passions, who _loved_ him, and now makes him wonder when the world got so _grey-_

Miles has his own tales, but not for tonight. Tonight, he listens to stories about a man who was never beyond anyone, not really, not where it mattered, and made his own sunshine when he felt there was none, who always got back up.

Tonight, he listens stories about a man who was just a boy, in the end, just a child, as we all are, who muddled through and made mistakes, and never was larger than life, not really, not where it mattered.

Tonight, he listens to stories about someone who tried, and about how it was enough.

 

Mary Jane knows about this, about how the person behind the mask was always just someone who tried. She knows it, maybe, better than anybody.

_We are all Spiderman,_ she says, _We can all wear the mask,_ and she means it, she means it, but her heart aches with every word.

Miles can tell. His heart aches, too, and thrums to life all at once.

What do you say to someone who doesn’t know your name, only the fact that you have replaced someone who could not get back up after a lifetime of rising to every challenge?

Miles does not know. He watches her, sometimes, when he spots her out in public. She, too, had those blue eyes filled with some much life, even if somewhere along the line she has formed an icy shield.

Miles doesn’t know what to say to her, doesn’t know how to reach out. Should he apologize? Ask for advice? Give her a hug or keep his distance?

He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, so he doesn’t try anything at all.

 

_Fast forward. Rewind. Keep track of the story. C’mon, man, where’s the rhythm, where’s your rhythm….?_

 

_All it is is a leap of faith,_ Peter B. Parker says, eyes earnest and wide, and Miles wishes it were that simple.

But it’s not, it’s not, because when Miles leaps the glass catches to his hands and shatters, commets flaring into life in the mirrored light of New York below before being abruptly cut out, and he falls and he falls and he falls, _down, down, down._

Except- he’s not- he’s rising, he’s _soaring,_ and the city has never looked so beautiful and his heart never so full.

_Is this how it feels,_ he thinks, _to be alive?_ And for a few perfect moments that last forever Miles believes _Yes, it is,_ with every molecule of his being.

 

Swing, and _move_ with it. Find your rhythm, find your flow, catch and release, catch and release. Got it? Got it? Good. Keep up, c’mon, man-

A truck careens down third avenue, and Spiderman turns the corner with it. The screeching wheels echo through his head and people’s panicked cries clash in counter harmony and Miles breathes- breathes-

_All it is is a leap of faith._

And Miles-

Leaps.

He lands, falteringly, in front of the truck. He has no idea what he’s doing but the car is _definitely_ out of control and it is _definitely_ going to kill someone if it doesn’t stop soon.

...If _he_ doesn’t stop it soon.

_With great power comes great responsibility,_ echoes through his head like a mantra, from comic pages and dead blue eyes that once shown with life, and the weight of it all rests heavy on small shoulders.

_Think, Miles, think._

The truck comes hurtling towards him, fast and big and _loud._

_Think f a s t-_

Okay, okay, so Miles knows that he’s strong, but he’s not really- uh- tested _how_ strong. yet. He can turn invisible- he has his webs- he has his- venom strikes. He can- he can-

No time to think. No time to even _breathe._ Miles swings out to webs on the buildings either side and holds tight, puts his arms out and braces his legs and holds his breath.

_Please let this not be a mistake._

The truck hits, jarring and present and all too suddenly there and up close, and Miles almost closes his eyes but _doesn’t._

It hurts, almost, aftershocks trembling up and down his arms and his chest, and Miles skids, feet digging into cement and breath coming in and out and rough and _hard,_ teeth grinding together and heart _pounding, pounding, p o u n d i n g-_

And the truck, amazingly, _stops._

His arms tremble, a little, either from shock or left over fear, or just the pain of stopping a full blown runaway ten ton _truck,_ but he’s alive, and Miles breathes and breathes and only registers that people are cheering when the man who was driving the truck stumbles out the side door on shaking legs and grabs his hand and pumps it up and down, up and down, saying _Thank you, thank you, thank you-_

“You’re- uh- welcome,” he says back, blinking. There are so many people all around them, and he can feel their stares prickling his skins.

But they’re smiling, and so Miles smiles- tentatively- back.

 

* * *

 

_With great power comes great responsibility._

_A mantra. A chant. A proclamation. Something to live by. Something that will sink into your skin and carve itself into your bones, if you let it._

_It is the most powerful of things, to give without asking for anything back. It is, perhaps, our responsibility as human beings._

_It is something people have failed at though, have struggled with for all our eternal short lives. People grow in a world where living is impossible without receiving something, and everyone has forgotten to offer so we have learned to_ take _._

 

* * *

 

 

_Find the story, string the words along like cans of paint on store shelves and spices in the kitchen cupboard. C’mon, man, c’mon-_

Miles presses down on the gunshot wound of a girl, presses down as tight as he dares. He’s trying to reassure her- words stumbling and tripping over each other- and the ambulance has been called.

He doesn’t know what to do. He’s not a doctor. He’s not even a nurse. All he knows is from watching stupid crime TV shows and _Grey's Anatomy_ with his mom sometimes. She says that the doctors on that show often do all the procedures wrong anyways.

What if he’s just making it worse?

She’s looking up at him. Big brown eyes- filled with pain and tears and panic. Her chest is rattling, and he wants to reassure her but he doesn’t know _how._

“You’re going to be okay,” he says. The words fall flat.

There’s nothing left for Miles to do. He can just sit there and put pressure, sit there and _breathe,_ sit there and ignore the stench of blood and sweat and grime, sit there and _wait._

Too much time to think. This is not the first time he’s stared into the eyes of someone dying. It will not be the last.

Wrong place, wrong time, this girl looks close to his age, maybe Gwen’s age, maybe younger, maybe older, Miles doesn’t know, doesn’t know, a lot is happening at the moment and so he just focuses on putting pressure and listening to the tell-tale sound of sirens.

Three gunmen. _Stupid, stupid._ All tied up now, but not before that lucky shot, not before _this,_ middle of the night and three men trying argue mob territory and treaties. He doesn’t know why the girl came here, why she was walking down this alley, just that now she’s hurt and the air smells of iron and musk.

He has a test tomorrow. A project he was supposed to be finishing. Had been on his way back to the dorm to do just that and now _this._

_Stupid, stupid, should have been faster, should have been smarter-_

Sirens, sirens, the girl gurgles a bit on her own blood and Miles doesn’t know what to _do._

The ambulance arrives, and Miles could _sob_ in relief. They pull him off her, put her on the stretcher, everyone’s shouting and yelling, everyone’s _loud,_ and the flashing lights are too bright and they hurt his eyes.

They try to make him come to the hospital, but he shakes his head, shakes his head, and when that doesn’t work he gives the paramedic holding him a tiny shock and then turns invisible, runs away.

(Built to run, to hide, built to fall to the ground. Miles is light-boned and small-shouldered and he is built to disappear into nothing at all. Miles is invisible. Miles is screaming, and it falls on deaf ears.)

He swings up to closest building with a flat empty roof he can find, and then he tucks himself away into one of it’s corners, breathes and breathes and _breathes,_ but all he can smell is the blood on his suit and so he soon stops, stiffly swings away to his dorm, spills in through the window.

Only then does he become visible once more, and Ganke opens his mouth to say something loud and funny and probably admiring and sarcastic, but the sound chokes off somewhere in his throat.

Instead, quietly, panicky-

“Oh my god- is that _blood?”_

Miles swallows, sudden spasms taking over his shoulders, nods.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god-”

His roomate is freaking out. Miles needs to get it together, calm him down, clean his suit. Do his project, study for his test.

He’s fallen down. Time to get back up.

He swallows, no saliva in his mouth.

“It’s fine. It’s- not mine. Not my blood. I’m not hurt. Just- she’s in an ambulance, now. She’s going to be okay.”

_I hope_ goes unsaid.

Mechanically, he takes off the suit. It’s easier than it looks, with how tightly it fits. Or, at least, it usually is. This time, his hands can’t seem to catch at the hidden release latches, can’t seem to get a grip. His fingers are slick with blood that’s not his own, and very suddenly he wants to throw up.

Ganke snaps out of his freak out at that, at the look on his face, helps him peel the suit off, shove it into a plastic bag and hands him pajamas to change into.

Miles changes into them. Walks down the narrow strip of hallway and washes most of the blood off in the communal bathroom sink while his friend guards the door.

He’ll take it to May’s house tomorrow, where she’ll wash it properly with her high tech machines and stuff. This will do for now.

And then they head back into the room, sit down at their desks and do their things. Silence, silence, Miles slips on his headphones and opens up the powerpoint he’s supposed to be working on.

Stares.

He washed his hands three times, even though not a drop of blood actually touched his skin. But the helplessness sticks to his flesh like a leach, the panic in that girl’s eyes striking something in his core and it’s still ringing.

Test tomorrow. Project due. He needs to sleep, probably, needs to get something to eat.

Instead, he opens up a new page on the web browser, starts looking up on-field medical emergencies and how to respond to them, how to handle someone who’s been shot, how to help someone going into cardiac arrest, how to give CPR, to tie a tourniquet….

_Helpless, helpless,_ Miles hates being helpless. Hates being unable to help.

 

* * *

 

_To live a giver in a world that only takes is one of the most challenging lives one could possibly imagine, because the world will take from you, take from you, take from you, take from you until all you have left is blood and bones, and then it will take that from you, too._

 

_W i t h   g r e a t    p o w e r c o m e s   g r e a t   r e s p o n s i b i l i t y ._

 

_People call givers many things. Perhaps that is the one commodity takers have learned to part with: we have learned to give names._

_We call givers heroes. We call them gods. We elevate them above ourselves and make ourselves believe we can not be so good or so kind or sacrificing. That the people around us are incapable, too._

Anyone can wear the mask, _whispers Mary Jane Parker,_ Anyone can be Spiderman _._

_How many believe it?_

_Do you?_

 

* * *

 

_Back track, back track: where are you heading? From where did you go?_

“You’re a cool dude, Spiderman.”

Miles laughs, bumps his knuckles lightly against the proffered hand.

“Thanks!”

The hotdog vender smiles brightly, teeth a little crooked, lips dry and chapped from the chill of the winter wind. The younger boy had swung by and asked for the works, sliding crumpled bills onto the open counter with a sort of anticipatory hunger found with growing children with hours of physical exercise under their belts and empty pits for stomachs. It was a particular look, and the man could recognize it even with the big bug eyes of the boy’s costume.

“On the house!” he cries, and insists on it when Miles tries to pay anyways, pushing the money back and letting out booming laughs as a crowd starts to gather to watch the strange exchange, a small figure in red and black and an old man with his big worn down coat, shoving money at each other and both insisting until at last the younger gives in with an embarrassed titter and an exasperated sigh.

The crowd cheers. The hotdog gets handed over with a sense of finality as Spiderman carefully slides the money into his own jacket pocket.

And then, just when the crowd is about to converge, he disappears.

There is aww-ing and cries of shock and disappointment, and a breathless laugh that echoes as Miles swings up and around the corner.

_(Leaps of faith, every swing is a leap of faith and this is what it feels like to be a l i v e-)_

There’s a grocery shop down on twenty seventh, in the middle of an armed robbery, and Miles only notices because his spidey sense tingles and crawls up and down his neck, makes him do a double take mid swing and flip right around.

It’s an easy fight, tiny little family owned grocery shop in the middle of nowhere. The guys weren’t going for big cash, just an easy bit of money. Spiderman flings two webs and staples the criminals to the floor as the lady calls the police, laughs when she gives him a massive hug and goes on and on and on about what a good boy he is, what a hero he is.

It feels good. It feels validating. It feels like seeing spots of gold in a sea of grey.

It feels good enough that when his mom calls him that Friday, asking how far he’s gotten on the way home, if there’s anyway he could stop by the store for vegetables, he heads right on over as Miles Morales and smiles at the woman as he picks out one of the worn out baskets by the front door.

He’s greeted by a cold hard stare, a raised eyebrow, and suspicious glances. It makes him falter, grin falling off slow, greeting slipping off his tongue like water on rocks.

She’s been robbed, of course, just earlier that week. It’s only natural, really, only natural-

Except-

Except a tall white twenty something year old stumbles in smelling of smoke and sweat and she doesn’t even bat an eye, and he looks far more like the robbers than Miles ever will.

Miles doesn’t comment. Miles focuses on counting tomatoes and picking out the best lettuce head, and then pays for them at the front counter. Ignores the way the woman- who just a while ago had hugged him like some lost relative, like some sort of _hero-_ double checks the bills he slides over like they might be forfeit, the way she looks at him down her nose like he might be some criminal.

It makes him wonder, maybe, if everyone cheering on for the new Spiderman expects blonde hair and white skin, expects a different kind of hero that Miles could never be, would never want to be, not really-

Who does that woman think Spiderman is? Who does she think is under the mask? Is there some sort of category that marks a hero, that left Miles an outlier, an extremity?

It makes him sort of feel like a sub parr replacement for the real deal. It makes him feel like a placeholder. Like a fake.

Maybe he is.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

The woman slides over a brown paper bag filled with vegetables that will make some delicious concoction later on that evening. He hefts it awkwardly under one arm.

He sort of wants to ask. Wants to say- _and what if? What if Spiderman is not white and blonde? Would you have hugged him then?_

But he doesn’t. Says a quiet thank you, disappears into cooling Brooklyn air.

_What if? What if?_

_Anyone can be Spiderman._ Didn’t you hear?

The city rumbles onwards, despite Miles disquieting thoughts. It thrives and flashes and towers, and it stops for no one, just keeps moving and moving and moving forwards, and it leaves all who cannot keep up behind.

Miles breathes in smoggy air and moves on with it.

Sometimes, maybe, that’s all he can do.

He wishes things made sense, sometimes, wishes life would stop being so grey. Morals are tricky, tricky things, because sometimes he’ll rescue someone from being mugged only to find them neck deep in a gang war three weeks later. Sometimes, he stops a hate crime from happening only to find the same hate crime happening one street over, in reverse.

Sometimes, sometimes-

Morals are tricky, tricky things. No one person is good or bad. It’s something he struggles to rap his head around, a pill he tries so hard to swallow.

It is harder still, maybe, to swallow the fact that Spiderman doesn’t get to pick and choose. Doesn’t get to decide if he agrees or disagrees with opinions and viewpoints, if the violence is justified. It’s too slippery a slope. Spiderman just stops the pain, whatever the cost to him, and moves on the halt another fight or robbery or attack.

Spiderman is there to save everyone, regardless of the shades of white and black that makes their souls grey.

(Miles wonders, sometimes, if anyone is out there to save Spiderman. If that is a question he is even allowed to ask.)

_Steady on, Morales, steady on._

 

* * *

 

_Do you think, just for a minute, if Uncle Ben could look down at the living below, if he could, he would condone this? Young hands grasping for something to hold onto and keep them falling forever with every leap of faith?_

_Do you think he would feel proud? Scared? Do you think the guilt would lay him so very low it_ hurt _? Do you think that when his Peter Parker breathes his last, his uncle doesn’t stop apologizing for a minute because there is a difference between taking responsibility for your actions and declaring yourself some self-sacrificial Atlas, holding up the whole wide world in two bleeding palms just because you can?_

(Even if others, too, can help?)

 

_W i t h   g r e a t  p o w e r   c o m e s   g r e a t   r e s p o n s i b i l i t y ._

 

_We all have great power, or the capability to reach it._

_We all have responsibility. But people forget._

_And those who find themselves realizing their own strengths stand to take the weight of the sky off our backs, hold it up so that we can see the sun, and we leave them there, straining, struggling, and live our lives like they mean anything if we refuse to give anything back._

_Except of course they mean something. They’ll always mean something. People mean something, no matter how tired or bruised or angry or scared. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what our givers, our heroes, have realized, while the rest of us have forgot._

 

* * *

 

Spiderman saves the day.

_Miles_ saves the day.

It’s a weird thought, something that doesn’t quite stick right to his thought processes. Sometimes, when he hears Spiderman, he still thinks of those bright blue eyes, the way they beamed with a sort of liveliness.

Sometimes, when he’s especially tired and lonely, he’ll think of the others, their multiverses, their crazy far too distant worlds. He’ll think of their wisdom, their powers, wishes he could somehow reach their level of capabilities.

It’s almost funny, really, that it’s far easier to think of people from entire different universes as Spiderman or Spiderwoman than it is to think of himself as the hero.

The first time he takes down Sandman, he finds dirt and rocks and twigs in places no such things should ever be for _weeks_ afterward.

The first time he takes down Rhino, it leaves him with bruises all up and down his arms and torso, mottled blacks and purples from being grabbed from mid air and slammed into buildings and the ground and just about every available surface.

The first time he takes down Green Goblin, it leaves him with a broken ankle and a sprained wrist, and bruised, bruised ribs. It leaves him shaking with more than just adrenaline, because that guy was _creepy,_ and he thinks he might be more fearful of Osborn before he transforms than afterwards, because the way he leans close and _croons_ is just unnatural.

And it’s weird. It’s _weird,_ because Miles knows these villains, knows them from behind his TV screen, knows them the way he knows famous people and natural disasters. Has been one of the people cheering Spiderman on as he attacked and swung around and shouted quips. And now, suddenly _he’s_ the one swinging, the one trying to stop the chaos and the danger and the destruction, to foil the evil plan before it’s too late.

(He thinks, maybe, that his bad guys have an unfair advantage on him, because in the other universes they were learning how to fight and be evil right along with their assorted Spider as they learned how to fight and be good. And here, here, here these guys are _years_ ahead and Miles is spastically trying to keep up and not _die.)_

(He’s so, so glad for his venom touches. So, so glad. He’d be in the deep end already without them, and New York would have another Spider to mourn.)

So many people, all over, watching him, analysing him. He’s the one on the TV screens, now, and he isn’t always greeted with cheers. New York loved her hero, and now that the first is gone…

Miles tries. He tries. He gets back up, again, and again, and he struggles and strains and he tries some more.

Maybe it’s not enough. But it will be. _He_ will be.

He has to.

People are counting on him.

_With great power comes great responsibility…._

 

* * *

 

_People say the saddest stories ever written are tragedies, are the grand old tales of the Odyssey and Shakespearean woes. Do not let them lie to you. The saddest tale ever told is that of the Giving Tree, and the way it just kept giving until it had nothing left, and no one ever gave anything back, or even thought to refuse an offering made of broken roots and bloodied branches._

_How people still read the tale and think it simple and innocent and sweet, and not heart breaking._

_Peter Parker stopped a city from being destroyed and paid the costs for it. He died, alone and cold and scared. He died, brave and strong and true, and young, so young, so very terribly young._

_People in their twenties are supposed to be discovering themselves. Peter Parker, in this universe, discovers himself when he is sixteen years old, in a body not fully grown while his uncle lies dying and cold, a proclamation of having power and having responsibility rattling his very bones, and when he is in his twenties he gives so much away he cannot rise any longer, and is instead left dying and cold, too._

_He never gave up, but human beings were never meant to carry the weight of the sky. We are not gods, even if we worship givers like they are ones._

_Basic human decency. When has it become something beyond our reach?_

_Do you think Uncle Ben was proud? He must have been. But he also must have been so very terribly, terribly, terribly sad and guilty, for branding a child with a mantra that will lead his bright life cut short far too soon._

_(Peter Parker died. It was possibly necessary. But does that make it right?)_

_(Can anything make that right?)_

_(Morals are tricky tricky things, and Spiderman doesn't get to ask. The stories he listens to get carved into his skin either way, little notches and quiet words, the gasp of a thank you and the shrill screams of fear and the way sometimes people’s stories will never get to their full conclusion, will be cut off far too soon, that sometimes there’s nothing he can do about it, not really, not where it counts.)_

_The sky must be held up. That is not the question. The question is why must the sky be held up alone? Why can we not all hold it up together?_

_Why must there just be a Giving Tree? Why not a Giving Forest?_

_Everyone has a story, but why can we not hear any but our own steady trod through life?_

 

* * *

 

 

_Anyone can be Spiderman. Haven’t you heard?_

Miles stares at the TV screen in a sort of horrible shock, halfway home with a backpack full of eggs, and his fists clench small and tight then release, release, release-

All it is is a leap of faith.

Mary Jane Parker has been kidnapped by Dr. Octavia, stolen from her home in broad daylight, strange chemicals leaving the entire block incapacitated and unconscious until several hours later.

Some part of him feels like he owes it to his universe’s Spiderman, for what he’s done, for what _he did- the blood, the scrapes and the bruises and those bright blue eyes, too big fists pounding down, down, down and the sickening_ crack _echoing through his ears-_ and some part of him feels like he owes it to the other universe’s Peter, for that old man with old tired brown eyes that had not given up, not yet, no matter how much he tried to say otherwise, who loved his ex-wife with a sort of gentle fierce passion that filled him up like a balloon and burst into every artery.

_With great power comes great responsibility._

He wonders if they got back together. He wonders if they figured things out.

He hopes so.

_Breathe, breathe-_

(Atlas shrugs his shoulders, and the sky rumbles.)

He drops the backpack off in some old rusty rain gutter, out of sight, changes clothes and then runs, leaps, soars and falls and _lives_ in a breath of the moment no gravity seems to be able to touch him strong enough to pull him to the ground.

 

He finds her, eventually, deep in some empty sewer in a a secret lab-like cavern deep underground. There are restraints fit to hold a Spider in the far corner on some metallic cot, a wall of nasty looking tools right behind it.

Miles stares, stares, grips his fingers and releases, releases-

Moves on.

The adrenaline clings to his bones like a leach, and he trembles with it.

But there is no one left for him to fight: Dr. Octavia is knocked out cold, eyes closed behind her goggles and tentacles limp against cold concrete. Mary Jane rises from where she had been sitting, and the look in her eyes makes Miles want to brace himself.

He flickers in and out of invisibility. Takes one step forward, one step back.

“You really aren’t him.”

The words are calmly stated, echoing through the room with a sort of deceptive casualty. But Miles can _feel_ the tremors in the air, senses the too stiff snap of her spine, the way her hands, folded tightly in front of her chest, are shaking.

And Miles… Miles still doesn’t know what to say.

( _W_ _hat do you say to someone who is as strong as steel and as fragile as glass? How can you reach across a void that contains the distance of lifetimes, connected by a slim strand of spiderweb too small to see, a man with blue eyes so alive they send you reeling, a man dead and buried and gone?)_

She’s scruffed up, fiery red hair a mess and smarting bruises on her knuckles while she nurses a split lip. She had told the world once that _We are all Spiderman, we can all wear the mask,_ and she had believed it with every inch and fiber of her being.

(That does not mean she does not ache, that she does not twist the wedding ring around her finger again and again, little circles that loop for eternity in replacement for a ‘forever and always’ she will not get to share.)

“I knew you weren’t,” she says, and Miles wonders how someone can sound so broken and so strong, “You would have- you would have come to me. If you were him.”

Miles swallows, swallows, steps forward, steps back.

“I just thought- he always got back up, ya know? He always got back up and I saw the mask and-”

(She doesn’t know his name. She only knows the fact that he’s replaced someone who could not get back up after a lifetime of rising to every challenge.)

Miles wants to say so many things. He wants to say that he was so brave, and so good, and his eyes were so blue and bright and so very alive, and that he kept fighting until the very last.

But Mary Jane knows about this. She knows it, maybe, better than anybody, has helped build the man- _the young man, the boy, the child, a flare sputtering out before having its time to truly shine-_ who died in that chamber, helped build him from the ground up, marked his bones with more than just the weight of responsibility and power, but with love and hope and friendship and kindness and strength and confusion and something to fight _for._

Her blue eyes shine with that same life, and Miles wants to compare it to flying, wants to compare it to stars, about how the light in her eyes shines just like Spiderman’s did, like the older man was looking at him even after death.

Telling her that Peter Parker was a good man would be as pointless as carrying water from a mountain spring to the sea: a river already knows its destination, it does not need you to guide it home.

Peter Parker can never come home, and Miles feels very small and guilty, feels like an impostor, feels second rate.

_I’m sorry,_ he wants to say. But those words have probably become numb and dull to her, said one too many times by people who could never feel their true weight.

(Gwen Stacy told him, once, somewhere between not-dying and secret labs and evil geniuses, that people kept telling her they were sorry for her loss, that every time they did she died a little bit more inside because the words could never be enough for the sheer amount of stormy horizons the world had become.)

She looks at him, eyes so very blue that Miles could drown in them, and cracks something that might have been a ghost of a smile once upon a time.

“But I suppose anyone can wear the mask, huh?”

His heart aches and thrums to life with its every pounding beat, a constant reminder of _you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive._

Miles Morales is built to run, is built to hide. Light bones and small shouldered. Miles screams out into a world that has forgotten how to listen, and the mantra that pushes him forwards is carved into his bones where no one can see it, while spray painted on his skin like a canvas of broken art are all the stories of people he has saved and all the people he has not.

He will never be enough, in the end, one small boy with the world on his shoulders.

But he will get up. He will try. He will try until he can try no longer, and then he will get up one last time.

_(Do not let the world make you forget that life is but the most beautiful tragedy. Don’t forget that morals are tricky, tricky things, and that everyone matters, everyone does, that just because someone might die it does not mean that it is right, that it is fair. Don't forget, do not forget. Do not forget.)_

_(This is your responsibility. Etch it into your bones.)_

Miles Morales is screaming in a world that refuses to hear, but Mary Jane listens, has always listened, will listen, probably, until the last of the earth tumbles into salt and sea, and becomes nothing once more.

She knows, after all, how the person behind the mask was always just someone who tried. She knows it, maybe, better than anybody.

Miles Morales is a canvas of broken art, and people around him take and take and take and forget to paint his story onto their skins.

And he listens. Listens with a heart of gold.

Mary Jane is screaming, too, and somehow their calls into the abyss make a symphony.

Miles swallows. Breathes. He steps forward, and this time he does not step back.

_All it takes is a leap of faith._

“Anyone can be Spiderman,” he says, and his voice cracks dry and his voice cracks small.

“Yes,” she says back, “I suppose anyone can.”

 

Later, later, and they sit at the top of a skyscraper while New York moves on below them, to a new day and new horizon, to the new world that waits for it just around the bend.

Mary Jane seems comfortable, here, perched a hundred stories up as they talk, and Miles wonders if this is somewhere Peter brought herup to, once.

He wonders, wonders, and lets the thoughts trickle down to nothing.

There are no stars in the city, but if Miles squints all the world below becomes but a blur of lights and pulsating colour, and he can almost make himself believe they are watching a sky of the most beautiful embers in the galaxy, a milky way revealing itself just for the two of them, a pair of lost souls trying to find their way home.

 

* * *

 

_People do things that hurt others, they make mistakes and commit crimes, they burn and they bruise and they heal and they laugh and joke and cry and rage. We are all, in the end, but shades of endless grey, and do not believe anyone who tells you otherwise._

_It is difficult, as all important things are, to understand. It is maybe difficult for a reason._

_We are all shades_

_Life is a mix of shades and colours._

_It is the brisk cool dawn of morning and the endless humming of crickets in the nighttime. It is laughter, mingled and loud and bright and real. It is a child’s first playdate and a lover’s first kiss. It is the cat in a barn and the bird soaring above. It is love, and happiness, and joy of the purest forms._

_It is the crime at the end of the alleyway, the blood dripping from fatal wounds and the coldest of winters. It is people looking down on each other for stupid reasons, for the colour of our skin and the people we want to care for for the rest of our lives. It is fights that end in tears and wars that singe like an old scar for years and years and years after they’re done. It is suffocating silence. It is hate, and pain, and sadness beyond words._

_Life is every saturated sunrise. It is every distant horizon. It is every fading sunset, disappearing where we cannot follow and cannot reach._

_It does not explain. It takes and it gives and it happens, it happens and it happens and it happens, and the fact that it happens to you is something so vital and intrinsic it makes the world spin round._

_Life comes in shades. It is broken. It is beautiful. It is a gift._

_It is art. You are the artist._

_What will your stroke of paint provide?_

_What shade are you on this endless pallet of everything we can and cannot name?_

_What is your story?_

_Do you know?_

_Do you want to?_

 

* * *

 

 

_Focus, focus, you have to begin if you want to get anywhere-_

Miles is tired.

It is Sunday afternoon. The sun has begun its slow descent from the smoggy heavens, and Miles stares at the homework he’s doing and his brain refuses to stay focused.

Two nights ago, he watched someone get killed. Point blank. A gunshot to the head and a cut off cry, and Miles had never moved so fast in his _life,_ had stuck a hand out and zapped the shooter and then had- had-

They make it seem so simple in the movies. They make it seem so clean and sufficient.

It’s not.

It’s messy and horrible and _wrong._ It’s awful, it’s blood, everywhere, it’s a sort of cold panic thrumming in his rib cage, the taste of vomit in his mouth.

It _smells._

This was not a good man. This was not even a kind man. He dealt drugs to kids and had a background for being a sexist pig. Miles wants to feel like his death was validated. Wants to feel like this doesn’t matter.

But instead all he feels is sick.

Sick and tired.

Sick and tired, and so sick and tired _of being_ sick and tired.

Friday night, he stumbles home to their apartment and throws up the tacos they have for dinner, cries into his pillow for hours and hours and hours, falls asleep and wakes up screaming with no sound.

_(Screaming, screaming, Miles is screaming and no one can hear.)_

Careening from his bed, he slams into the wall of the hallway and then crashes into his parents room, where his father is already halfway out of bed.

He’s crying. Shaking. Holding onto the thin spider webs of his control with a two fingered grip and breaking down into pieces.

“Miles, Miles, kiddo, what’s wrong, what’s wrong-”

He struggles to get the air in. Struggles to release. There are tears streaming down his face and his nose is running something _awful,_ and his mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, until finally-

“Un-uncle Aaron-on-”

They make sympathetic cooing sounds, pull him close. Miles closes his eyes and grips as tight as he dares with super strength he doesn’t quite know how to control yet, and silent, trembling sobs wrack his entire body as his mother murmurs, “Oh, _pobrecito,”_ into his hair.

It’s a lie, it’s a lie, because Uncle Aaron filters in and out of his nightmares like the haunting spectre he has become, and tonight he was not there.

No, tonight he dreamt of that drug lord’s dead bloodshot eyes, the way they stared at nothing, the way there was no life in them _at all-_

He was not a good man, but Miles would have saved him, if he could.

(Maybe it’s not completely a lie after all, because Uncle Aaron was not a good man, either, and Miles would have saved him, too.)

 

Saturday morning, and he and his father drive out to the wall of grey cement they now own, cans of spray paint clinking in the back seat.

It’s long and tall, right out where anyone can spot by to take a look, excellent texture and great lighting. It’s _perfect._

But anger bubbles under his skin, and a sort of sad exhaustion settles in his bones.

He picks up the paint.

The end result is a mess of browns and blacks and angry hues, red splattered on top like a bolt of lighting, barely there crinkled brown eyes staring out calmly at him through the storm.

(He realizes only once he’s done that they belong to Uncle Aaron, that their gaze is colder than he remembers them, that the whole wide world is colder than before, too.)

“And what’s this?” his father asks, voice neutral but a small frown colouring his features as he looks on.

Miles tucks paint splattered hands under his armpits, scowls at his masterpiece, pretends that his eyes aren’t wet and small zaps of electricity aren’t smarting his finger tips.

“Life,” he mutters, and walks back to the car.

_How do you do it?_ he wants to ask, _how do you look at people who kill other people like it’s nothing every day, dad, and continue to smile?_

But he doesn’t.

They don’t say a single word to each other the whole way home.

 

Later, later, Saturday is coming to a close and his mother stands before him, cups his small face in her small, strong hands.

“What’s wrong, _mi cielito?_ Why are your eyes so cold and angry?”

Miles wants to be angry. Angry is easy. It boils red hot in his veins and drives away the crushing weight, the too-many too-late nights and the nightmares and the pain and the haunting eyes that just keep looking, no matter how many times he pretends he cannot see them. Anger acts as a shield against the vulnerability, against the fear, against the blood coating the hands of his suit, the way that this feels like _too much,_ the way that he feels like he’s getting in too deep, how somehow the universe chose wrong.

Some small part of him is so, so scared. Miles doesn’t want to die, alone and cold and young. Miles doesn’t want to miss out, to be helpless, to be unable to help.

Angry is easy.

But his mother is holding him, looking at him with every gentle concern and care, and Miles can’t bring himself to feel angry with her so patient and kind.

The tears come red hot, and he blinks and blinks and his breath rattles in his lungs.

He’s smushed against her in an instant, held tight and safe and _secure,_ and he wonders how long it’s been since he felt so safe.

“I’m so tired, _mamá,_ I’m so, so _tired-”_

She nods and hums and holds him, and she doesn’t understand, not really, assuming it is school and stress and social groups weighing him down, not the whole wide world.

But it does not matter. She comes to kneel besides him, and takes some of the weight off his small shoulders, stands to carry the sky with him.

Sometimes understanding is beyond us. It does not mean we cannot be there.

 

Sunday morning. Father and son drive again to the wall, and Miles picks up a can and paints over everything from start to finish, those chilled brown eyes being to last to vanish under a haze of grey.

“And what’s this?” his dad asks, voice soft. He, too, is there, even if he cannot understand.

“I’m trying again,” he responds.

“So soon?”

Miles nods.

“It’s time.”

And his dad smiles, places a palm warm and sturdy on his shoulder, and he leans into the weight.

“Okay, then.”

And they learn to start again as the sun rises before them.

(Later, later, Miles will be tired.)

(Sometimes, tired is not so bad a thing to be.)

 

* * *

 

 

_Morals are tricky, tricky things._

_Do not believe anyone who tries to tell you otherwise._

_Everyone has a story to say. Reasons and motivations and pasts that pain their skin and drive their actions. We are all made up of shades of grey. Not a single one of us perfect._

_Sometimes, though, if you are very lucky, you will find someone who doesn't care about your mistakes. Who will love you for all your levels and all your shades of endless grey. Who will help you, even if you struggle, even if you colour black._

_Love them. Tuck them close to you heart. Hold them like they are small and precious. They are your spots of gold in a sea of grey._

_Even more difficult, however, is to find people who do not care about levels of grey at all. Who do not know you and maybe never will, who will hold out a hand and love you for your existence anyways. Who will see how important you are, because you exist, because you are here._

_These people are sunshine. They are the saturated sunrise warming you with endless gold. They are Atlas, lifting that great yellow orb on your rainy days until the time you can learn to do it for your own._

_They are kind, and gentle, and true._

_(They are what we call heroes.)_

_They are people, in the end, people who try their best._

_They are your giving trees._

_(Do not let them become tragedies.)_

 

* * *

 

 

Miles swallows. Hard.

Takes a step forward, takes a step back.

The plain, rusted black gate waits in front of him, and for some reason it is far scarier than is has any right to be.

 

May looks at him from across the table, eyebrows low, eyes calm, and patient, and blue, blue, blue. The mug in her hand lets loose pale streams of steam into the air, and she does not fidget or prod or question or pry.

He appreciates that, more than he can say.

The living room around the corner is back in order. The holes in the wall are fixed. New furniture has been bought and placed where old furniture could not be repaired, and the carpet had been soft under Miles’s socked feet.

_(“We’ll get through it,” May murmured a lifetime ago. And they are.)_

The breath is caught oddly in his throat, but Miles releases, releases, and imaginary glass shatters so that he can learn to _live_.

“My uncle-” he starts. Stops.

Uncle Aaron, to him, had always been a good man. He’d been kind, and patient, and there. He helped with homework and with girls and with friends, helped him learn to paint and helped him learn to grow. He was so _easy._ He was easy to be with, easy to love.

But Uncle Aaron was not a good person. Uncle Aaron was a villain, was a thug, and when Kingpin ordered him to finish Peter Parker’s broken and beaten body, The Prowler had stepped forwards with no hesitations.

(There had been no hesitations when he had been ordered to take out _Miles,_ either, not at first, not until he sees his face, and sometimes in his worst nightmares he gets the mask off and his uncle looks at him and _just keeps going-)_

It’s a sort of horrible realization that makes the world so much more cold, when you realize someone you love has very probably killed people.

They made cookies together. He helped Miles with his homework, listened to him rant and rave about stupid rules and stupid things. Miles lost his first tooth in Uncle Aaron’s old run down apartment, and he _still_ has an old teddy bear tucked away somewhere in his closet that the man had given to him on his seventh birthday.

(Miles is not a big person. He knows, logically, that his body is gangly and awkward, that he has the body of a child not yet grown. The Prowler must have been able to see it, too, and yet his hands had wrapped around his neck anyways.)

He wants to hate him. He want to rant and rave. He wants to _scream._

And yet, despite it all, he still loves him.

“My uncle,” he tries again, “ was a bad person.”

May reaches out and holds his hand, and Miles lets her, blinks back tears and takes every deep breath that comes his way.

“But I still- I still wish he hadn’t- that he-”

Silence swallows him whole. And Miles breathes in stuttering breaths that fill him to his core and tries to speak out anyways.

“I still love him. I still miss him _so much-_ ”

“People aren’t all good or bad, Miles.”

“I know, I know- _but_ -”

“He was good to _you._ He was your Uncle. You loved him. That does not mean you condone his actions.”

_Breathe, breathe-_

“Tell me about him,” she says.

And he does.

 

Miles closes his eyes, and takes a leap of faith.

He has his suit on under his clothes. It feels- right somehow. It makes him feel brave. Makes him feel safe. It is a badge of honour. It is defense, shields against a world prying too close.

(The last time his uncle saw him, he was wearing a fake imitation. This is him, now, who he really is, and part of him wants to show just how far he’s come.)

The gate creaks quietly when he opens it, and again when he shuts it behind him. The air is crisp, here, and he pulls his jacket tight around his shoulders and wanders the winding paths until he comes to a stop at a smooth grey stone.

He stops. Kneels.

(This is real, real, present and here. He wasn’t ready before, but he is now, he is now, he is now-)

Breathe.

“Hey, Uncle Aaron.”

“I miss you.”

“I wish- I wish-”

_Morals are tricky, tricky things._

“You know what I mean. You always do.”

 

Miles leaves the graveyard twenty minutes later, and on cold grey stone a small spot of gold stands proudly, the painted sunflower rising from the grass roots below and reaching for the stars.

 

* * *

 

_This is how you make the sun shine on your rainy days: you hold it up._

_It is both the hardest and easiest thing you will ever learn to do._

_This is how you hold it up: you help, wherever you can._

_You_ give _._

_We are all Atlas, in the end. The world we live in is forever closing in, and we must hold up the sky if we do not want to be crushed. The givers will help, they will help and they will not ask for anything in return, but we must learn not to take._

_Anyone can be Spiderman. Anyone can wear the mask._

_Do not put them up on pedestals, unreachable, these people who try._

_Strive to help. Strive to_ try _._

_We must become a forest, if we ever hope to grow._

 

_W i t h    g r e a t    p o w e r    c o m e s   g r e a t    r e s p o n s i b i l i t y ._

 

_Life is a gift._ It is power. _It is a broken tapestry. It is beautiful and ugly and here._

_You are an artist._ This is your responsibility.

_You hold the thread, the brush, the spray paint._

Use it.

_It is, in the end, how you capture that life in your eyes, how you make the sun shine on your rainy days. You live as if every moment is a sacred gift and not a given right, you live as if every person’s life is something to cradle small and gentle to your chest._

_Anyone can be Spiderman. Anyone can wear the mask._

_Anyone can care, if they take the time to listen, if they take the time to try._

 

* * *

 

_Where do we end, and where do we begin?_

 

Miles flips through their dorm room window, heart pounding with adrenaline and Ganke immediately _glomps_ him, latching onto him and spinning him around the room.

_“Dude!”_ he crows, “dude! That was so cool! I was watching the whole time and you were _so freaking awesome._ You were just- KA POW! And PHWIP PHWIP and KA BOOOM!”

Miles laughs, shoves the bigger teen off him, but he’s jumping up and down, up and down on the balls of his feet.

This is what it feels like, to win. This is what it feels like to _save the day._ This is what it feels like to be a hero.

Ganke throws him a bag of chips, demands him to eat and to also give a full retelling from his point of view, and Miles rolls his eyes but compiles.

Cheetos taste like victory.

 

_What is your story?_

 

Miles works on his homework at the kitchen table, his mother pottering around the him as she makes dinner, singing along with the radio.

The song changes, a familiar catchy tune Miles recognizes from somewhere in his childhood, long ago, and suddenly his mother’s face is inches from his own, eyes shining.

“ _¡Baila conmigo!”_

And he lets himself get pulled to his feet, lets himself be swung around and around and around the room, and all he feels is warm.

 

_Do you know?_

 

Mary Jane places down a bouquet of sunflowers on top of a mountain of gifts and candles and offerings, traces the words left etched into cold stone.

_Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary._

Miles watches as the woman breathes and releases, breathes and lets it all go. He watches as May, standing besides him, reaches out and takes the other by the hand, and when wrinkled fingers reach to him, too, he does not say no.

And they stand together, old and young and in between, light and dark, worlds of experiences between them.

They stand together, and they are united, and somewhere beyond the horizon he wants to believe Peter Parker is smiling.

 

_Do you want to?_

 

The cans rattle in the back of the car, and Miles sings loudly and off tune along with the radio as they drive, making his father laugh. When they get to the wall, they leave the car running and the windows open, music blasting and pounding in Miles’ ears.

It’s different from before. His father and his uncle are not the same men, and he wouldn’t want them to be.

But different doesn’t mean _bad_.

There is the rush of spray paint hitting dull cement, the rush of bringing something into full colour, of creation, and Miles flits around like he was born to do this, just this, to make something beautiful and unique and his own.

It feels like Spring. It feels like rebirth.

And when he’s done, it is a mess of colours and shapes and shadings. It is clashing and bright and beautiful, and a hundred different eyes stare out, happy and sad and all in between, and it is a milkyway of blurred colours from a hundred stories above.

“And what’s this?” his father asks, sounding warm and proud and quiet. This is special, and precious, and Miles tucks it close and gentle to his chest, right where his heart beats in a steady rhythm, _you are alive, you are alive, you are alive..._

He smiles.

“Life,” he answers, and the sun above them flares like it agrees.

 

_We are here. We are listening. Won’t you tell us?_

 

Miles swings down 43rd street and laughs at the rush of wind- _leaps of faith, every swing is a leap of faith and this is what it feels like to be  a l i v e -_ only pausing when he spots a wayward hand going back and forth, back and forth.

He swings back round and lands in front of the guy, and old man with a sharp smile and a balding head. When he speaks, his accent comes out thick and unrecognizable, English stilted.

“You are Spiderman, yeah?”

Miles nods, slowly.

“Uhh, yes?”

“Ah, good. Where have you been? I need help with my groceries.”

The boy blinks, realizes belatedly the man is holding a handle to a rusted red wagon filled to the brim with food items- bread and soup and milk and cheese.

“Oh- um- of course!”

He takes the handle, and the guy starts updating him on what’s been going on in his life, telling him a continuation of a story he’s never heard.

Spiderman smiles and listens.

New York moves on.

 

* * *

 

_Rewind. Tell the story from where you begin, from where we all begin, in the end._

 

Miles Morales is fourteen years old. His shoulders are smaller and thinner, but his grip is steady. He has taken the weight, he has taken on the mantra, and the sky rests heavy on still growing muscles.

He is sunshine. He is the splash of golden in a world gone dark. He is a giver, and he is giving.

_With great power comes great responsibility,_ it’s being carved into his bones, tattooed in black ink across his small yet to be calloused palms. It is spray painted across his vision, across his clothes, on an improvised suit he wears like a badge of honour and a shield of armour all at once.

He is taking a leap of faith. All around the multiverse, all around the many timelines and many synapses, in world upon world upon different world, Spiderman’s and Spiderwoman’s and Spiderlings of a hundred shapes and sizes and colours and beings stand on the ledge of the tallest building they can find.

And they leap.

They fall, they fall, they fall, and for all the worlds to have ever been they rise to meet their destinies.

And they always get back up. They get back up if they are tired, if they are bruised, if they are broken. They get back up until they are blood and bones and then they get up one last time.

They are Atlas. They are holding the sky up for you. They are your spots of gold in a sea of grey.

They are givers, and they are giving, and everyone everywhere takes and takes and takes.

_With great power comes great responsibility._ It is carved into their bones, inked onto their skin. It is the mantra that beats in tempo with their pounding hearts.

_You are alive. You are alive. You are alive._

This is not their story. This is just one small part.

_Listen, listen, can you hear them?_

The New York skyline rises up into the inky blackness that is everything it can never quite reach, and Miles breathes in a stuttering breath that fills him to his core, rises with it and goes ever farther, and touches a distant milkyway of the most colourful stars.

**Author's Note:**

> To a friend: you always were my patch of sunshine


End file.
